Parasocial is an award-winning student short co-written and directed by Joseph Jeavons that has picked up prizes at Houston Comedy Film Festival (Best Student Film) and Art Blocks International Film Festival (Best First Time Filmmaker). The film centers around Ricky (Jeavons), who begins to idolize roommate Dylan (Sam Teague). Dylan isn't exactly reciprocating the sentiment. He's an amateur criminal operating an illegal horse meat exchange who reacts to increasing heat from the police by laying low and manipulating Ricky into doing his dirty work. As things continue, two police officers (Jordan Mook, Beckett Nichols) infiltrate their daily lives and suddenly their apartment becomes ground zero for an undercover investigation. 

While there's never really a moment when you forget that Parasocial is a student film, Jeavons shows quite a bit of promise with his storytelling and obviously is able to get his cast to have fun with this 17-minute comedy short film. Grading somewhat on a curve, okay majorly on a curve, Parasocial is a promising film with a solid story that for the most part overcomes budget limitations and the film's obviously low-budget production quality.

Owen Swift's lensing for the film is largely effective and Swift also contributes the film's original music. 

As someone who has juried high school and college filmmaking competitions, there's not much cooler than watching a newbie filmmaker figure things out. Parasocial may not be Scorsese (Who is?), but it's also not Uwe Boll. 

Both Jeavons and Teague have fun playing into their characters and it's going to be great watching Jeavons continue to grow as a filmmaker in the future. 

Written by Richard Propes
The Independent Critic